Facebook is an indispensable part of social media. There are amazing things you can do on Facebook, be it advertising or content marketing. Most people only use this platform to socialize and can’t even imagine what more they would do with it. If you’re one of them, it’s time to change your perspective.

What if Facebook traffic could earn you money? Don’t worry; you don’t need to join the company for that. If you take your social media marketing seriously, and invest your time in a well thought out sustainable strategy, you can get a lot more than a few Facebook likes – you can earn money from your business.

Laura Roeder is a social media marketing expert who empowers businesses with the tools they need to make an indelible mark on the web. She has created the social media scheduling software Edgar, along with social media marketing web courses like Creating Fame and Social Brilliant. Last summer, in the week between May 29 and June 6, her business made more than $10,000 from Facebook alone. Before you learn how she did it, following are the three things you should be aware of:

1. Don’t Get Discouraged By the Data

Vanity metric are statistics that may sound impressive, but may or may not translate into actual profits for your business. It feels great to see a status update get a lot of likes or comments, but an update can get hundreds of those and not earn you a cent, while another that doesn’t get any likes lands a click through that leads to a $50 earning. These vanity metrics on social media still matter as a status update with 100 likes represents that at least 100 people engaged with or became aware of your business. While all the data is important in its own way, you shouldn’t let it discourage you or convince you that social isn’t your cup of tea. There are times when your business update doesn’t even manage to get a single like, let alone a comment or share. To make things worse, the vanity metrics indicates that things are going downhill for your business. You know what it doesn’t tell you, though? It doesn’t tell you how many people clicked on the link and landed on your site and how many bought from there, or came back later and made a purchase then.

Vanity metrics are great, but not for your own vanity – they can indicate a lot of positive things for your business. However, their absence doesn’t imply that your social media marketing isn’t making an impact. Hence, don’t be demotivated if your updates seem to be flopping because the statistics that matter the most are just out of your sight!

2. Sharing Is Caring

When you create content for your social media profiles, whether it’s a blog you’ve written or just a ‘quote of the day’, you aren’t just creating it just for your own followers, you’re also creating it for their followers. Gaining followers on social media is a catch-22. You want fans to become your customers, but how can they become your fans without being your customers first? That’s what shares are for. When others share your content, they introduce it to an exponentially larger audience. Maybe you only have one follower, but if your one follower has a thousand followers of his own, and he re-tweets a link to your blog, that link will reach out to thousand people! Write content that will get shared to the hilt.

Look at these two Facebook updates from Laura’s ten-thousand-dollar week.

Firstly, if you’re not using Facebook Insights to get data for your own page, you should. Now, look at the bottom post first. It’s basically one of the best songs of all time and yet, nobody shared it. That means the only people who saw this post were her followers who happened to see it in their news feeds, along with anybody who was looking at the page – a total of 1,269 users. See the next update posted– the one on top. That video got shared by 15 different users which meant that a whole lot of people who had maybe never even heard her name before saw this update. In fact, more than 10 times the number of people saw this update as compared to the other and it was only posted a few hours later. Social Brilliant, her web course, goes into a lot more detail about writing updates that get shares – as you can see from these figures-shares can help you in growing your audience and bringing in bucks.

3. The Big Picture Matters

Social media marketing hinges on a long-term strategy. You may not see results tomorrow, or next week, or next month, but that doesn’t mean you won’t see them ever. You’ll only get to that point if you stick with it equally through the bad times as the good. When you’re getting started, you may feel like you’re playing to an empty house all the time and that makes it seem like your social media marketing isn’t going to pay off. That’s when giving up can seem so tempting, especially if you don’t really have a plan. The only way to get past that situation is to make a strategy, manage your time and follow it; else you’ll quit long before you even start to realize your own potential!

How She Earned $10,690 from Facebook in One Week

She did the same thing she does every other week of the year.

It is that simple. When she was starting, and as her business grew, she developed and maintained a strategic plan that carries her social media marketing week after week. By using a carefully created calendar and a little automation pixie dust, she is able to consistently follow a pattern that works for her and her business. She doesn’t make it up as she goes along, and that’s been the one thing that made all of this possible. Social media marketing seems like a struggle only when that’s what you allow it to become and in that case, following a plan is the ONLY solution. And she’s got a plan for you.

Her web course, Social Brilliant, offers a strategic guide that has anything and everything you need to derive results from your social media marketing efforts. You don’t need to have time to sit and figure all this out, the course does all the work for you. It’s not just about advice and philosophy – it is about schedules, templates, and other tools that you can leverage to effectively implement the strategies you learn.